We should be past the point of surprise when school shootings happen
Early in the movie "Grand Canyon," a middle-aged man named Simon, an auto mechanic/tow truck driver played by Danny Glover, confronts a young gang member. The point of the scene, as the spectator learns over several tense moments, is that the young man has a gun, and Simon does not. Simon has a few options here, on this deserted street in Los Angeles in the middle of the night. He could beg for his life. He could try to shame the younger man into “making something of himself.” He could try to bribe him. Instead, Simon grouses about the gap between what he has come to expect from life and what shows up on his plate.
"Man! World ain’t s’posed to work like this... this ain’t the way it’s s’posed to be... everything’s s’posed to be different from what it is.”
Here in America, and now in August of the year 2022, several groups of people are dusting off their expectations for the coming school year. After eight to twelve weeks of relative freedom, students are expecting to sit at their desks, to control their impulses, and to have their heads filled with new knowledge. Teachers are expecting to utilize skills that have lain dormant, both their own skills and those of their students. Parents may be expecting to feel a bit of “empty-nest syndrome.” Administrators are expecting, or at least hoping, to be prepared for all exigencies.
No one wants to think about the expectations of another group — those who will become active shooters at schools. Whether we think about them or not, we are, even at this early stage, on their minds. But who are they? A study of mass shootings over the past 56 years reveals a profile that is not entirely unexpected. According to the 2021 book "The Violence Project: How to Stop the Mass Shooting Epidemic," four similarities found in mass shooters stand out: “... experience with childhood trauma, a personal crisis or specific grievance, and a script or examples that... provide a roadmap. And [then] there’s the fourth thing — access to a firearm.”
The authors studied 180 shooters, discovering indications of self-hate that often turn outward against a group, along with histories of previous suicide attempts, of which the mass shooting is the latest and usually successful attempt. “Mass shooters design these to be their final acts,” says co-author Jillian Peterson. In other words, suicide by cop, and sometimes even suicide by armed civilian.
This ain’t the way it’s s’posed to be.
As the book’s title promises, the authors offer some suggestions. Safe storage of firearms is a no-brainer, and greater access to mental health services is another, with school psychologists urgently needed in every school system in the country. According to James Densley, the book’s other author, one narrative “is that we’re not going to touch guns because this is all about mental health, [and if so] then what’s the plan to fix that mental health problem?” So far, the silence is deafening.
Sometimes a classroom teacher might learn of a student’s mental health issues but be ill-equipped to help. I often think about the young male student who came up alongside me one autumn Friday afternoon as everyone headed to the gym for a pep rally. He had moved from Chicago to Wetumpka to live with an aunt. It was my first year of teaching and more than fifty years ago. I still remember his first name, but I’ll call him Buddy. He was 14-years-old, smart, quiet, and well-behaved. In all the noise and bustle of hurrying to the gym, he began a conversation with me almost before I realized it, but I quickly caught his main point, the story Buddy seemed eager — determined — to tell me.
“I was walking like this with my best friend when somebody shot him, and he fell down dead right beside me on the street.”
This ain’t the way it’s s’posed to be.
As a former English teacher, I felt compelled to put a comma in Buddy’s sentence just now, but that day he spoke in a rush, the words pouring out, so maybe I should have written his words all jumbled together without spaces between them.
I remember that he stared at me, expecting some kind of response. I stared back. I think I stopped walking. He probably did, too. I wish I could remember what I said to him. I hope it was comforting. Education courses never prepare you for moments like that. Now, in a different century and as a retired teacher, I wonder if education courses anywhere are preparing young teachers for the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. Are those schools of education capable of preparing anyone for such a brave, new world?
Ready or not, here they come: The students, teachers, administrators — and school shooters — for the academic year 2022-2023. We’ve all had at least fifty-six years to get ready, ever since the mass shooting by the man in the clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966. This is a subject no one, except for the shooters, wants to think about. We don’t yet know who they are, but they are almost certainly thinking about us. They are stewing in their grievances, checking out available firearms, planning their own deaths. We cannot honestly say that we are not expecting them.
What do you expect? How are things s’posed to be? As for me, I believe our greatest mistake will probably be in not expecting school shootings to continue, in not expecting them to increase in number and in deadliness. Our greatest failure will be in not understanding that school shootings are a fact of modern life in America. Until we put into practice suggestions made by those who have researched the subject, we should not claim to be surprised when we hear of school shootings. Instead, we should wake up every day with the dead certainty that they will happen.
Linda Fisher, a resident of Prattville, is a novelist, a retired public school teacher, and the former owner of a small business, Chocodelp
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: We should be past the surprise when school shootings happen
